"This book is a handbook for optimists. It is a thought-provoking documentation of the progress of the condition of human beings in the last century. In spite of the constant negative reports we hear, people are, in fact, better fed, better clothed, better housed, and better educated than at any previous time in history." "The author draws from a wide variety of sources to support this optimism. The book covers such aspects of modern life as our health, living standards, political and economic freedoms, educational facilities, communications, increased leisure, and our ability to get along with one another and our Creator."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

From the bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of Genius and Chaos, a bracing new work about the accelerating pace of change in today's world. Most of us suffer some degree of "hurry sickness." a malady that has launched us into the "epoch of the nanosecond," a need-everything-yesterday sphere dominated by cell phones, computers, faxes, and remote controls. Yet for all the hours, minutes, and even seconds being saved, we're still filling our days to the point that we have no time for such basic human activities as eating, sex, and relating to our families. Written with fresh insight and thorough research, Faster is a wise and witty look at a harried world not likely to slow down anytime soon.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

From a global perspective aquaculture is an activity related to food production with large potential for growth. Considering a continuously growing population, the efficiency and sustainability of this activity will be crucial to meet the needs of protein for human consumption in the near future. However, for continuous enhancement of the culture of both fish and shellfish there are still challenges to overcome, mostly related to the biology of the cultured species and their interaction with (increasingly changing) environmental factors. Examples of these challenges include early sexual maturation, feed meal replacement, immune response to infectious diseases and parasites, and temperature and salinity tolerance. Moreover, it is estimated that less than 10% of the total aquaculture production in the world is based on populations genetically improved by means of artificial selection. Thus, there is considerable room for implementing breeding schemes aimed at improving productive traits having significant economic impact. By far the most economically relevant trait is growth rate, which can be efficiently improved by conventional genetic selection (i.e. based on breeding values of selection candidates). However, there are other important traits that cannot be measured directly on selection candidates, such as resistance against infectious and parasitic agents and carcass quality traits (e.g. fillet yield and meat color). However, these traits can be more efficiently improved using molecular tools to assist breeding programs by means of marker-assisted selection, using a few markers explaining a high proportion of the trait variation, or genomic selection, using thousands of markers to estimate genomic breeding values. The development and implementation of new technologies applied to molecular biology and genomics, such as next-generation sequencing methods and high-throughput genotyping platforms, are allowing the rapid increase of availability of genomic resources in aquaculture species. These resources will provide powerful tools to the research community and will aid in the determination of the genetic factors involved in several biological aspects of aquaculture species. In this regard, it is important to establish discussion in terms of which strategies will be more efficient to solve the primary challenges that are affecting aquaculture systems around the world. The main objective of this Research Topic is to provide a forum to communicate recent research and implementation strategies in the use of genomics in aquaculture species with emphasis on (1) a better understanding of fish and shellfish biological processes having considerable impact on aquaculture systems; and (2) the efficient incorporation of molecular information into breeding programs to accelerate genetic progress of economically relevant traits.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise. America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from? As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy. In The Great Stagnation, Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.